Tuesday, September 23, 2014

#Scandal by Sarah Ocklar {POCKET REVIEW}

Lucy’s learned some important lessons from tabloid darling Jayla Heart’s all-too-public blunders: Avoid the spotlight, don’t feed the Internet trolls, and keep your secrets secret. The policy has served Lucy well all through high school, so when her best friend Ellie gets sick before prom and begs her to step in as Cole’s date, she accepts with a smile, silencing about ten different reservations. Like the one where she’d rather stay home shredding online zombies. And the one where she hates playing dress-up. And especially the one where she’s been secretly in love with Cole since the dawn of time.

When Cole surprises her at the after party with a kiss under the stars, it’s everything Lucy has ever dreamed of… and the biggest BFF deal-breaker ever. Despite Cole’s lingering sweetness, Lucy knows they’ll have to ’fess up to Ellie. But before they get the chance, Lucy’s own Facebook profile mysteriously explodes with compromising pics of her and Cole, along with tons of other students’ party indiscretions. Tagged. Liked. And furiously viral.

By Monday morning, Lucy’s been branded a slut, a backstabber, and a narc, mired in a tabloid-worthy scandal just weeks before graduation.

Lucy’s been battling undead masses online long enough to know there’s only one way to survive a disaster of this magnitude: Stand up and fight. Game plan? Uncover and expose the Facebook hacker, win back her best friend’s trust, and graduate with a clean slate.

There’s just one snag—Cole. Turns out Lucy’s not the only one who’s been harboring unrequited love...

As a chick lit, it is really a good read. It is wonderful in
the sense that it addresses a very sensitive issue of today's world. Social
networking. While you can supposedly 'stay
connected', most often then not it becomes a little too much. This becomes
a weapon, a tool to serve individual's personal and selfish motives.And
knowingly or unknowingly, deserving or undeserving, the other end becomes
the helpless victim. Lucy is the latter, winding up in a #scandal, that is
mostly made up. But who's done it? Nobody knows. And that's what Lucy is trying
to find out. But the virtual world where providing an identity or a face isn't
a necessity most often, things aren't looking up for her.

Lucy, Cole, Asher, Jayla each of the characters do enough
justice to make them likeable. He honestly though, I would've liked a little
stronger and prominent Cole. But my sole attention was on the storyline, the
actual plot regarding the scandal to divert elsewhere. But yes, there was room
for improvement, definitely. All the characters, even Lucy to some extent, needed a wee bit more characterization. The book ended with a very nice note, but I couldn't shake the feeling that something was amiss. Still, I would recommend it whoever likes a chick
lit with a serious message to convey (specifically those who liked The S Word
by Chelsea Pitcher even though it's not one of my favorites).

Hey! I’m Munira, a 20-something Asian blogger who loves sugar, spice and everything nice. Oh and I love some “Dark” stuff as well! My hobbies are to read, sleep, eat and fangirl over the littlest of things. I started my little book blogging heaven because I love to rant about books and authors and I adoreconnecting with like-minded readers from all over the world. Are you a book blogger? A reader? Visiting for the first time? Read the Long Rant about me to know more. Shoot me a tweet over at Twitter or elsewhere, I’d love to hear from you :) Are you terribly shy (like me) when it comes to talking to strangers? No worries! You can just silently stalk my online rants by subscribing to my sweet, sweet blog. Have a happy time :D